


The Beast of Sannikov's bay

by JayBarou



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M, Other, Sasha was never taken, Songfic, inspired by a voltaire song
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-23
Updated: 2021-02-23
Packaged: 2021-03-18 20:55:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,776
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29374965
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JayBarou/pseuds/JayBarou
Summary: Jon goes to investigate a picturesque port village somewhere in Russia. It was supposed to be a quiet research into Gertrude's travels; a cold trail. He didn't expect what Sannikov had in store for him.
Relationships: Gerard Keay/Michael | The Distortion
Comments: 11
Kudos: 24





	The Beast of Sannikov's bay

**Author's Note:**

> I thank Jaysworlds. This was not exactly what we talked about, but this is the song I latched on to.  
> My eternal thanks to Hypnoshatesme, who knows every bump in the road of this fic, because I went dragging my feet and moaning about every single one of them in his askbox

_His teeth are sharp as scissors_

_His claws, they are like knives._

_And if you think he's ugly, wait 'til you see his insides!_

_(_ [ _ The Beast of Pirate's Bay~Voltaire) _ ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcgvLiNYCcA)

Jon had been researching Gertrude's travels for a while, her computer didn’t have any more information, but he had found the Institute's budget spreadsheets. Elias hadn’t said no, so he assumed he was allowed to check them. He hadn’t expected much, but he found the name Gerard Delano next to a few plane tickets. Most of his expenses matched Gertrude’s, which was to be expected, but there was one last ticket. One small discrepancy. It could be a bureaucratic mistake...

...but Jon was already on a plane to Russia.

He didn’t know what he expected to find in the cold, village by the sea where the money trail led. Probably a tombstone. Maybe a police report if he was lucky. It was possible some locals remembered a tattooed goth on the loose. His investigations had dried up, so even a mention in a newspaper would be welcome.

He was pleasantly surprised when, on the first night, he visited the local pub. It was full of patrons and it smelled like human heat, wood, and spilt drinks. Jon turned to the bartender to ask for something, but she was decidedly distracted.

It took Jon almost half a minute to realize she was keeping an eye on the small group at the end of the pub. Jon had been too busy thinking what his next step should be to pay proper attention to his surroundings, but as soon as the bartender left to find a glass for him, he looked around. The patrons didn't look like locals after a second look. They looked like a bunch of hooligans from different teams begrudgingly sharing the same pub for the Premier finals.

But the bartender had been paying attention to a specific group, and Jon focused on the figure who had gathered a few others around him. Nothing remarkable. Huddled, wearing a beanie, fingerless gloves, a thick coat even inside, and nursing a beer, but it wasn't all that interesting on its own. The small pile of bills and the crowd around him was much more interesting; hungry eyes followed the man's hand gestures and his every word.

The figure was clearly not part of the group. He didn’t know what made him think it, but he was absolutely sure. Maybe the way the guy shifted his attention from one to the other, never letting his guard down. He looked like the kind of lonely guy who would sit in the corner and look menacing. The company was merely an anomaly.

Jon wouldn’t trust those looks either; they made him feel like there was a rough statement about to happen. The man, however, managed their attention with ease and a hint of a wolfish smile. Jon thought maybe the bartender knew something he didn’t about the group... and then the man whipped his hand this way and that and he saw the unmistakable eyes on the joints.

Jon turned with eyes the size of dinner plates to his drink. He tried to play it cool and strained his hearing to pay attention to what was being said. He knew he wasn’t the only one; a few more clients at the bar were looking into their drinks too intently just like him.

Gerard. Gerard _Keay_. He had expected an obituary, but the man himself, Gerard Keay was in the same room, as an apparition from one of their statements and weaving some kind of tale for the crowd. It was hard to believe.

"...teeth like knives, I swear. There is nothing natural in that creature. I saw it with my own eyes, I'm lucky I survived."

He seemed to have intruded in the middle of something. As much as he listened, as much as he heard, Gerard didn't explain what he had survived exactly but it felt... a touch wrong. The infamous Gerard Keay, complaining in some pub about some scary monster. That was... that was something Jon would do, not _The_ Gerard Keay. Then again, Keay's trail went cold after this place, so maybe something got to him. Maybe Gerard Keay had finally found something that _retired_ him _._

“I’m sure a bunch of dogs like you must know Robinson, right?”

Jon perked up at the familiar name. There was a collective annoyed rumbling, so apparently, everyone else had known her too. Jon couldn’t keep his eyes from the group.

“Well, I knew her, and let’s say back then she didn’t have all the grey hairs she had after she saw the beast. And you must know what it takes to move that unflappable woman.”

There were more affirmative growls.

"So you'd better stay away because I don't think it can be killed," he finished with a grimace that looked almost like a challenge. He took the last swig of his drink.

"We'll see about that, sailor," one of the pack of spectators rumbled with a deep laugh.

Gerard spared a glance for the rest of the pub and he locked eyes with Jon for the first time. His nose scrunched up for the briefest moment before it went on surveying the rest of the pub, but Jon was sure he had not imagined it. Then the set of people who had been surrounding Keay stood and walked away. They ebbed purpose, resolution and barely-contained violence. The door opened and closed after them, and Jon didn't have time to even think if he should approach before the two women sitting at the bar accosted Gerard, blocking his escape.

"You have more information," one of them hissed.

"Tell us." The other's voice was deceptively calm. She sat across from him.

"Your friends over there were kind enough to at least pay." Gerard Keay didn't seem to be worried about how at least one of them had skipped her rabies shot. "And you were prying anyway. Are you cheating on the Slaughter with the peeping Tom?" Gerard taunted with a musical tone.

"Listen, you little shit..." Gerard’s glass hit the floor, but it was too thick to break.

"Woah, woah, sit! Sit! I don't want Tereshkova to hide the good bottles again, okay? Let's pretend you are civil."

"Tell us."

"You were listening in, what else is there to say?"

"Where, when, who..."

"What do we have here, an ex-journalist? Okay! Put that down." Jon got ready to... do something, when the knife appeared. He didn’t know what, fight, fly or freeze hadn’t kicked in yet.

"What is that beast you mentioned? Does it have any weaknesses? Who does it belong to?"

"An overgrown guppy? A serpent from hell? Who the fuck cares? I didn't stay to ask its tragic backstory."

"Fine, then how did you survive?"

"Who says I did? Maybe I didn't. Maybe I'm a ghost here only to warn..."

The calmer woman of the duo opened her bag and took a book from it. Gerry zeroed on the cover like a compass on the North pole. She opened it, and Jon couldn’t see what was written in there, but he could make an educated guess.

“We did our homework. Talk.”

“I’m not stupid.”

They lowered their voices in what seemed to be a hushed negotiation. It took them more than Jon expected. One by one the people at the bar walked away and the group at the table didn’t raise their voice again enough to overhear. The two women finally stood, and Gerard did the same. He had the book, gingerly held by its spine, but Jon kept an eye on the women until they cleared out.

A pinch-like hand fell on his nape and a voice came from his side, although not directed at him.

“Tereshkova, don’t worry, we’ll get off your hair now. What do I owe you?”

Tereshkova abandoned her broom, walked behind the bar and spat a few words in Russian at Gerard. He left a good number of notes for her and laughed something sardonic.

“But your business has _vastly_ improved, hasn’t it?”

The bartender answered, still in Russian, but Jon had the vivid impression of her saying “Sure, all the wrong kind of bloody clients”.

“And you,” Gerard said Jon’s way. “Are going to take a walk with me. And don’t talk. No. Not a word.”

Jon closed his mouth after his third attempt, he was sure he was going to be shot in a back alley, but he kept quiet. He was tired enough and bored enough of secrets to demand answers forcibly, but he had read about the guy by his side. Gerard increased the pressure of the hand on his nape. Shutting up might be the right choice at the moment. 

They left the bar, with Jon just going along blindly. Gerard Keay, from up close, towered over Jon and was wearing the most striking black-red makeup. A tress like black silk had fallen from his beanie, his face was serious, and his brown eyes examined the street, slowly, but with a purpose.

“Look, I don’t know what kind of business you got yourself into, but this is not your scene.” He wasn’t frantic, but only because he seemed to have the discourse rehearsed. “If you have an impulse to _know things_ , remember that ignorance is not only bliss but survival in some cases. Abandon the... camera? Mirror? Whatever got you here. Move from wherever you live. Leave whatever job you have-”

“I work for the Magnus Institute,” Jon managed to say despite the warning to shut up.

“Oh.” Gerard looked him up and down. Jon felt the tension drop. “Then I’m too late, hmm? Always too late.” Gerard looked ahead into the middle distance, his eyebrows rose slowly. “Of course you are from the Magnus Helscape, you reek of it...” Jon didn’t dare to interrupt the moment of introspection, but he almost jumped when Gerard reached a conclusion. He sounded giddy too. “Ha! And she didn’t dare to come herself? I can’t fault her for it.”

“S-she? You mean Gertrude? I’m... the new head Archivist.” Jon was going for tactful, but he knew he had missed by a few degrees to the blunt.

Gerard finally stopped his pacing to look into Jon’s eyes. “...She went peacefully?”

“...No.”

“Good." He went back to walking. "That’s what she would have wanted.”

“Look, I have....”

But Gerard had apparently lost any interest he may have had in Jon. His strides were longer and he didn’t keep an eye to see if Jon was following when he turned a corner. Jon was following him, but that was beside the point.

“I have questions that I ne-”

“You shouldn’t be asking questions in your position. Then again, you are already in too deep..." Gerard put his free hand in his pocket. "It itches, doesn’t it? The need to know.”

“I... Yes. But...”

Jon was almost out of breath. He needed to get himself a pair of long legs like Gerard’s. He didn’t have enough air to both rush after him and ask questions, and Gerard was counting on it. Gerard walked to a convenient building under construction and forced the steel mesh until he could squeeze through. Surprisingly enough, he kept it bent for Jon to squeeze through too.

Gerard threw the book to the ground and kicked it to a half-built corner, then he pulled a spade from a nearby tool storage crate and put it over his shoulder. He looked into a barrel with some water. He checked around and seemed to think everything was in order because he opened the book with the tip of the spade. Never taking his eyes from the book he took out a flask and poured it over the pages. He passed a good chunk of pages with the tip of the shovel and poured some more. Then he lit a corner and walked back to where Jon was committed to his role of witness.

“Always keep your alcohol warm if you want it to burn,” Gerard said, still looking at the burning pile of paper. He was holding the spade like a weapon, waiting.

“That was a Leitner, right?”

“It went up too quickly, not eventful enough... It might have been a copy.”

“You don’t know?”

“I would have to read it to know for sure; I’m not dead enough to read Leitners.”

“Then you don’t know what it... did?”

“Did the cold freeze your...”

Then the earth itself seemed to catch fire and explode into a pyre. Tongues of flames crawled up the half-built wall and up the structure of iron bars. Fire shouldn't consume iron, or earth, not at that speed anyway, but what was normal or natural these days? Jon looked at the iron structure over them and back at the advancing pyre. 

“Not a copy after all.”

“Aren't you glad of having an expert here?”

Jon had taken a few steps back, but Gerard gave the impression of someone seeing exactly what he expected to see. He nodded and in a quick but smooth motion turned from the flames. He took a shovelful of sand and dropped it into the barrel half-full of water, then ripped open a cement bag and coughed like the smoker he obviously still was at the dust cloud.

The pyre was still burning behind them, and Jon was almost sure it was burning the air too, and spreading far below the ground.

Gerard used the spade to mix his little barrel of ingredients, and approached the book. He walked with confidence among the flames and shovelled under the book. He took it with a care and certainty that put Jon in mind of a baker taking bread out of the oven, then dropped it into his concoction, pushing the book deep into the cement with the spade. He seemed to consider leaving the spade there, sticking from the mess, but ended up taking it out and leaving it on the floor. The fire seemed to sputter as soon as the paper hit the wet cement. 

“What... what happened?”

“The Desolation happened.”

“S-sorry, the Desolation?”

“The Lightless flame? It’s the only one that resists fire, it pays off having a backup plan.”

“I, okay, yes, I see how that could be useful.”

The fire finally died down, but the air remained smelling of... If Jon had to define it he would describe it as the smell of things gone before their time. Although he wouldn't admit it out loud, of course, because there were no olfactory receptors for things gone... for such things. The cold that never really left swept even colder over the smoking remains of their previous predicament. Gerard clapped his hands.

“Good, now that that’s done, why don’t you make yourself scarce?”

“N-no, wait. I still have questions.”

“Like what?”

“Like. What are you doing here? Why didn’t you come back to England?”

“Why are you here if Gertrude didn’t send you?” Gerard said instead of giving an answer.

“I need a way to stop the Unknowing.”

“She didn’t tidy that one up before kicking the bucket, huh?”

“You could help to tidy it up.”

“No. I know your ilk. It will become a statement and then nothing will be a secret anymore.”

“If you don’t help, the world...”

“At what price?”

“Excuse me? You live in it too, you tell me.”

“In a way, but what is it to me if you go and save the world but the price is...”

“What?”

“Nevermind, walk with me.” He opened a way for them to get out of the building in construction. “Do you have assistants, new guy?”

“I... do. What’s it to you?”

“Tell me about them.”

Jon had a very brief moment of doubt where his respect for Gerard Keay, the one, waged war on his natural distrust.

“I don’t think I will.” And distrust won.

“Oh?” Gerard's face didn't move, but there was a certain something in his voice.

“If you have an issue, it’s with me. You don't need to know about them." He had spent too long distrusting his assistants, now things were... not clear, but at least less murky. He wouldn't throw the few ones who were on his side for a virtual stranger.

Gerard took his time to talk again, by then buildings had become few and far between.

“So you are the Archivist,” he stated the obvious.

“Head archivist, technically."

“And your assistants have not gone missing or...”

“No." There had been a few close calls; Martin, Sasha... But they lucked out of disaster so far. "You keep ins... Should they?” Gerard seemed to be deep in thought, definitely not listening to Jon. “Should they, Keay? Is there something I should know about my assistants?”

“No. Probably not. And... call me Gerry.”

They had walked already to the edge of the village. It wasn’t hard in such a small place. Asphalt gave way to an earth path, and Jon was still following Ge.. Gerry. Gerry had answers, he hadn’t refused to talk quite yet, or at least he hadn't threatened Jon for nagging him just yet. So Jon couldn’t let him walk away without asking his questions. It was Gerry who spoke first, though.

“I’ll tell you a story, and then if you still want, I’ll tell you what I know about how Gertrude planned to stop the Unknowing, and you can tell me if you are going to follow her footsteps. Deal?"

“I guess. I don’t think I really have a choice."

“Choices are... peculiar like that. You are told you have a choice and all the choices are bad. But I guess you could still turn away and try to run. It would be your wisest choice tonight.”

“I can’t leave without knowing. Now, about that story?”

“Right." Gerry took a deep breath and fixed his eyes in the distance. "The funny thing is, you never think of yourself as bushy-tailed until something happens that makes you realize you used to be. I was exactly that when I met Gertrude; at that point where you are not surprised by anything, but not yet ready for it anyway. After some time with her I found... A lie, a lie by omission. And I knew I couldn’t ask her about it. But far too often things prey on distrust and paranoia, so when I saw the unused flight ticket of one Michael Shelley, I had to check for myself. I didn’t consult, I just disappeared from her contact list. I studied the names, asked around and everything landed me here."

Jon stopped while Gerard kept going. He had crossed through a hole in a barbed-wire fence. It had signs hanging from every few posts in bright yellow, the black symbol printed in the middle was a radiation warning.

“Gerard...” Jon brought attention to the signs.

“Don’t worry. I hung those to keep hunters, hah, at bay. I spread rumours too. Obviously, something is wrong with this place, has been since the ritual failed, so the best choice was misdirection. Hunters, Slaughter things, fools that crawl all the way here thinking they are doing _the right thing_ , thinking they can cling to humanity if only their dangerous parts are pointed in the _right_ direction. Idiots.”

Jon crossed the fence too and they kept going, leaving the village behind and plunging into the soft hills of the nearby country. Jon wondered if being stabbed in a back alleyway wasn’t the better choice after all.

“You saw it yourself, I send them to the sea, there is a good chunk of inscrutable sea to get lost in and leave me alone. They can’t blame me for not finding a sea monster on the move, after all."

"But there was never a beast in the bay, " Jon deduced while a small and ignored alarm in his brain wondered where Gerry was taking them and if it would be another Daisy situation.

"No. It is just a load of Codswallop, but there used to be a Lukas that has taken to his heels with all this traffic. As I was saying, I reached this village. There was no Ritual anymore, no more never-existing-island but this was the closest place where it would have been if it ever was. This was where the rubble of the metaphorical explosion would have hit. Gertrude and her assistant had come, had seen the disaster on the ongoing ritual, something had stopped the Ritual and... She had left. Only she had left."

Gerry sent Jon a meaningful look, very eloquent, and Jon started to see why he had asked about his assistants.

“She...” Jon almost whispered.

"I spent a lot of time tracking anomalies, paradoxes and interviewing the few people who didn't avoid me. With success, for a certain value of the word."

“But she...”

“There was a door. And there he was, the assistant, somehow still holding out... in a way. Michael had been stuck _for a year_ by the time I arrived.”

Jon coughed. “It wasn’t...”

“An accident? No. It was her plan. Her way. All along."

“And Shelley..."

“Didn’t know until he was being fed to the monster.”

“Oh.”

“Yes, oh, very succinctly put. I tried to bring Shelley out of the Spiral, shove him out, but he wouldn’t give way. And... After a while, after talking... We even tried to at least- We pushed him deeper. To stop the constant pain of... I didn’t work either. It was stuck, not quite Shelley, and not quite the Spiral either. But those are Gertrude's footsteps. Are you going to follow them?”

"What!? No!? I... you mean offering one of my assistants to...? Is that what you meant before?"

Jon saw in the distance a cottage in shambles. The windows were broken, the walls combed and the roof uneven. But the door was freshly painted, open, and there was someone there. He looked entirely normal, even friendly if a bit worried, but Jon had heard enough.

"Is it him? He's still alive?"

"I wouldn't go that far, but he is... not dead. On a technicality."

For the first time during the whole evening, Jon thought of the choice of running after all. He had not had good experiences with doors and he didn't fancy another one. He stopped, Gerry stopped by his side.

"I wouldn't stop you, you know, but that village is going to be full of frustrated things coming back from the sea, and wanting to pick a fight. Your choice, again."

Then Gerry turned and left him alone to stew in doubts while he approached Michael with a greeting. Jon was on the fence, but he observed how Gerry seemed to unwrap and leave something behind in the few steps to the door. Even his voice got higher and less gloomy in a moment.

"Hey, Michael. Something new?"

The person at the door shook his head, but his attention was glued to Jon. And Jon... Jon may have a lemming-like preservation instinct, but he saw them, saw the way Gerry grabbed Michael's arm and got very close. Michael's frozen stance melted as soon as his eyes found Gerry. Nothing changed, but Jon felt like sharpness in the air had turned into a miasma of loops, and it was only a feeling. Jon decided he would take his chances here. He approached the door. Behind them, the door opened to a long hallway that didn't match the outside at all.

"What did my book burner drag home today?" Michael said and Jon's ear wanted to crawl into his head.

“Don’t worry, he’s the new Gertrude. Before you ask, yes, she's dead. And, wait for it, he huffed and puffed when I asked about his assistants. He..." Gerry broke and laughed out loud. "He thought I was going to go after them or something. Protective, this one.”

"An _Archivist_?" There were more doubts than words in Michael's question.

"Oh, because you knew so, _so_ many Archivists, huh, liar?" Gerry had a smile in his voice, Jon could hear it even when his back was turned.

"Hello, hmmm, Michael? Gerard mentioned you." Jon didn't even attempt to smile, Michael was already cornering that particular market.

"Hello, _Archivist._ Here to end a statement for Gertrude Robinson?"

“Actually, he was looking for me," Gerry didn't let Jon reply. "Or for answers at least, but he found me catfishing. He seemed to be very blind for someone so touched by the Eye. So I decided that depending on his reaction to your story I was either going to answer his questions or tell you I had brought take-away.”

Michael's smile became impossibly wide, Gerry's own was more subdued, somewhere between playful and tired. Nevermind the smiles, Jon was almost sure Gerry was dead serious. Almost.

"And what did you settle on?"

"Did you hear me saying I brought dinner at any time? No." Gerry leaned on Michael. "He would give you an ulcer."

Michael laughed at the stupid joke and Jon had to close his eyes because the noise was too pointy. He didn't want an encore, so as soon as the dizziness passed he asked: "You said you would tell me about the ritual-stopping..."

"Come inside." Gerry stepped aside to offer a way in.

"But you said you would tell me..." Jon insisted.

"What if Gertrude's method to stop rituals was always the same?" Michael crossed his arms and Jon had the vivid impression of a badly photoshopped model, with hands sticking from too far up the elbow or not at all. Just an impression. In front of him, Michael looked normal enough.

"I- It can't be. There must be something else, Gerry already told me that... there is something else... right?"

"I don't know." Gerry shrugged with a shoulder.

"What!?"

"Look, I don't know. I didn't trust her at that point. She mentioned a key and a place where I should go if... Well, things didn't turn out the way she expected of course."

"A place... she couldn't have some _one_ in a place under lock and key, right? So there must be something else."

"After the things you must have seen, how can you be sure she didn't have a convenient artefact to store a sacrifice?" Michael's laugh ran again, shorter, but no less headache-inducing.

Truth be told, Jon could imagine a human somewhere, stored in a crate or a coffin, to suffer, he could imagine a statement like that, he could imagine Salesa selling one to Gertrude. But it was a whole different question if Jon would dare to use such a thing.

"Does... Does it matter who...?"

"Who _what,_ new guy?"

"Who gets..." His voice got caught in his throat, he could only whisper. "Is there a way it could be me instead?"

The following silence could have dented any knife trying to cut it. Gerry looked at Michael with self-sufficiency, Jon waited with some anxiousness, Michael did with his face something impossible to follow, but he was staring at Jon and his twisted smile didn't pull so much upwards as sideways. Perhaps.

"Ahhh... I think... I see what you see, my flame."

"Of course you see, it is quite evident; he might be an idiot! But not a malicious one." Gerry turned to Jon and even took a wary step closer, the way one would approach a cornered animal. "Look, self-sacrifice is nice in theory, but after you do your thing, what? One of your assistants gets a sudden promotion and they decide to do the same as you _or_ they decide they would rather send someone else to do the dirty job. Which leaves us in the same spot."

"N-no. Why would...? You think there will be more Rituals?"

Instead of answering, Gerry turned to Michael and extended his arms toward Jon. Jon frowned at the implied _are you seeing this?_ in the gesture.

"Maybe." Michael then turned, went into the door and held it open for them.

"Come inside, someone has to fill you in."

"Is it safe?"

"No." Michael rushed to answer from behind a grin. "But you came with Gerry."

“I-I’m not very reassured."

“Then don’t very enter.”

Jon, of course, reluctantly crossed the threshold. He was curious first, reckless second, and person third, so there was nothing holding him back. The door closed behind the three of them noiselessly.

If you aren't careful you'll end up inside of him.

He'll eat you up, he'll spit you out. You'd better stay away.

Heed the sign that says, "Beware the Beast of ~~Pirate~~ Sannikov's Bay!"

 _(_ [ _ The Beast of Pirate's Bay~Voltaire) _ ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcgvLiNYCcA)

**Author's Note:**

> Give a listen to Aurelio Voltaire if you like horror comedy with a side of feelings


End file.
